The parents of a little boy in Palo Alto, California, want a security robot at a local shopping center to be taken out of service.
Tiffany Teng says her 16-month-old son Harwin recently had a scary encounter with the robot at the Stanford Shopping Center.
The boy got knocked down and run over by the 5-foot-tall, 300-pound machine and suffered visible injuries to his leg and foot– but luckily no broken bones. A mall security guard reportedly told Teng that another child was hurt by the same robot days earlier.
Teng and her husband told ABC 7 News they worry it could potentially harm another child.
The robot is designed to alert authorities of “abnormal noises, sudden environmental changes, and known criminals,” the station reported.
What’s strange, some shoppers said, was that the robot didn’t detect the little boy and just kept going– running him over.
One shopper suggested the engineers at Knightscope –the company that built the robot– need to work on the sensors a little more.
Harwin’s parents said they wanted to share their story with the local station in hopes that other parents will be aware when they go to that shopping center that their child could potentially get hurt, if they get too close to the security robot.
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